The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Red Dwarf
by Eileen
Summary: Sequel to Fellowship of the Red Dwarf, now crossed over four ways! FellowshipRDHitchhiker's GuideThin Blue Line[Rowan Atkinson TV series] Please review!rnNOTE: Smegups have been removed due to site rules. You can read them on my site.
1. Something's Wrong . . . Somewhere . . .

**THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE _RED DWARF_**

(Disclaimer: These characters belong to, respectively: Douglas Adams, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, Ben Elton and Rowan Atkinson, Tiger Aspect Productions, Ballantine Books, the BBC, J.R.R. Tolkien, New Line Productions, and the Saul Zaentz Company. Whew!)

Dave Lister stared in amazement at the uniformed Inspector Raymond Fowler standing in the _Red Dwarf_'s drive room. "How the smeg did you get here?"

"Well, I'm damned if I know, laddie. One minute I'm stepping out for a coffee, and the next . . . I'm surrounded by this odd light and hoisted up like a sack of potatoes and dropped unceremoniously on my backside in what vaguely resembles Moonbase Alpha after a three-alarm fire." He scratched his head contemplatively. "The last thing I remember is asking Patricia to get a glass of water for this young woman who'd just arrived at the station . . ."  
  
Tricia McMillan, a. k. a. Trillian, paced anxiously back and forth in the lobby of Gasforth police headquarters and asked plaintively for the tenth time in as many minutes, "Where's that inspector guy?"  
"How the blazes should I know?" sighed an annoyed Sgt.Patricia Dawkins. "He went out to get a cup of coffee two hours ago and I haven't heard a word from him since." She shook her head. "That man almost drives me mad sometimes . . ."  
Just then, Detective Constable Kevin Goody rushed up to her desk.

"There's some green thing outside!" he exclaimed.  
"Green thing?" Patricia looked at him dubiously.  
"It tried to read poetry at me!"  
"Oh, no," Trillian sighed. "Not the Vogons! Not here!"

"What's a Vogon?" Patricia asked her.

"You don't want to know."

Light years and several dimensions away, on board the _Heart of Gold_, the Fellowship of the Ring let out a collective, "Oh, no, not again!"

"My precious needs a drink badly," said Gollum.

"What kind would you like?" came a falsely cheerful voice.

Gollum jumped halfway across the room as Frodo and Sam looked around for the owner of the voice.  
"I think it's coming out of the wall!" said Merry.  
"My precious wants wicked strength lager," Gollum told Eddie, the ship's computer.  
Eddie chortled. "OK, if you like stuff that tame."

"Shouldn't we wait until--" That was as far as Sam got before he noticed Gollum chugging down a massive bottle of Hansen's Wicked Strength Lager. Boromir and Aragorn looked at each and said . . . "Oh, smeg."

In Moria, Arthur Dent was saying much the same thing in reaction to the sight of a posse of Ringwraiths riding toward him and his comrades.

"What do you suppose they want?"

"I don't know, Ford," Arthur said nervously, "but it can't be good because they're drawing swords."  
Zaphod's reaction was instantaneous. "**_LEG IT!!!!_**"

They went the wrong way and came to a massive door.   
"How do we get in?" Ford asked breathlessly.  
Zaphod pushed and pulled on the doors with all three arms, but it was no good. "Stupid doors!" he said, kicking them, which nearly broke his toe. "About as useful as a squashed melon!"  
To everyone's great surprise, the huge stone doors slid open.  
"Toldja I'd get us in," Zaphod beamed.

Ford and Arthur exchanged skeptical looks...

"I'm not sure it'd be safer in there than out here," Arthur said.  
Ford looked over his shoulder and spotted the approaching ringwraiths. He very helpfully pointed them out.  
"On the other hand . . ."  
They rushed inside, and the doors closed after them.

Back at Gasforth Police Station, Detective Inspector Derek Grim pointed out the glaringly obvious to Sgt.Dawkins:  
"We've got some strange things afoot here in Gasforth!"

"Very strange."  
Just then Goody came rushing back in. "Y'know that green thing that was outside?"  
"Yes?" Dawkins said patiently.  
"It's coming inside."  
"Is it?"  
"Yeah. Maggie just arrested it."  
There was a sudden whoop of triumph from Trillian.

"What is the meaning of this?" demanded the indignant Vogon as Constables Maggie Habib and Frank Gladstone dragged him into the station.

"Loitering is a crime, you know. Can't be hanging about all day, can you?"

Noticing the Vogon's lethal-looking blaster, Habib told Goody, "I think this bloke had more than just loitering on his mind, Kevin."  
"Yeah," Trillian agreed, "he was trying to kill me."

Goody looked shocked. "Why would he do that? Just because he's green?"

"No, 'cause my boyfriend's got his . . ."

The Vogon was furious by now. "I demand that you release me at once! We're very behind in our work! Lot of planets to demolish, and they've got to be gone by the end of the week!"

"What _are_ you driveling about?" Inspector Grim demanded.  
"Before I answer that," the Vogon said, "first tell me what universe I'm in."  
  
Back on board the _Heart of Gold_, meanwhile, Frodo and Gandalf were trying to get some sense out of Eddie, and failing miserably.

Eddie, for his own part, couldn't believe these two guys were so incredibly dense. "Geez, it's so simple! How many times have I gotta explain it to you?"

"Try one more," Gandalf suggested. "And this time leave out the fish."

"But, Gandalf, baby," Eddie chortled, "the fish are the most important part of the story!"

"Fish?" Gollum looked around. "Who say fish?"  
"Oh, now you've done it," groaned Frodo.

Merry and Pippin, meanwhile, were looking around for anything they could ride.  
Apart from a small space bike, which was unfortunately in pieces, they didn't find anything.

"No skutters!" Merry whined.

"No, but I found a panel that lights up when I press this button."

Merry's face brightened. "You did?"

"See?" Pippin demonstrated. "I push this button, and the panel lights up!"  
"It says PLEASE DO NOT PRESS THIS BUTTON AGAIN."

Back at Gasforth police headquarters, Inspector Grim gave the Vogon a very puzzled look.

"Can't you take that silly costume off?" he demanded.  
"I **beg** your pardon?" said the Vogon.

"Somehow, Inspector Grim," Gladstone said, "I don't think that's a costume."  
"Is it just me, Kevin," Habib whispered to Goody, "or has everything suddenly gone spare?"

"I don't know," Goody said. "But if this . . . thing . . . is here," he said, lowering his voice so the "thing" couldn't hear him, "where's Inspector Fowler?"

Habib winced. "I'm not sure I want to know."

In fact, **Fowler** didn't even want to know.  
Especially when he ended up in the wreckage of Parrot's, which had not yet recovered from Gollum's rampage.

"DEAR GOD!" he erupted in astonishment and outrage. "It looks like a bloody bomb went off in here!"

"Oh, I forgot we haven't cleaned this up yet," Lister said. "We'd have the skutters do it, but half of them are in for repairs."  
"Bloody little fat gits," Rimmer muttered under his breath. "Oh, let's have skutter races. Meanwhile you're breaking most of them!"

"Skutters?"

"Little service robots. Oh, here comes one now."

The skutter peeked cautiously to the right and the left . . .

"It's okay, Bob," Lister said. "They're gone."  
Fowler had never before seen a machine breathe a sigh of relief, but that's what the skutter did--at least, that's what it looked like. "What seems to be the trouble with him?" he asked Lister.

"Long story, man."

"No doubt." Fowler said, gingerly steering his way through the remnants of Parrot's Cafe.

"WHERE ARE WE?" Zaphod shouted over the deafening silence.

"It looks like some kind of tomb." Arthur observed.  
"Ours, more than likely." Marvin interjected glumly.

"This reminds me of the tunnels under Magrathea," Ford mused. "Only without the weird carvings on the walls."

Arthur nodded and said, "I was just thinking it's a bit this mausoleum I used to play in at the church cemetery when I was a kid..."

Ford gave him a funny look. "Fun childhood."  
"It was just a place to go! Nice and quiet, and no one bothered me."  
"You had to go to a **cemetery** to escape being bothered?"

"It's not something I often talk about." Arthur said. "People usually give me funny looks when I do..."

"Ssssshhhh!" both of Zaphod's heads said at once. "You hear that?"

Ford and Arthur looked at each other. "Hear what?"

"Thought I heard something."  
The place was immense, and as silent as death.

"Probably the sound of all hope of rescue being shattered." Marvin opined.

Marvin dejectedly shuffled off...

"I wonder how big this place is," Arthur mused. He'd been in concert halls that weren't half the size of this.

Just then, the most hideous things started coming out of the woodwork--or was it stonework?

"What in the hell is that?"

Zaphod froze (which was unusual for him). "I don't know," he said, "but I think we'd better get out of here."

Seeing the newcomers pull out sharp swords, Ford was inclined to agree." LEG IT!!!!!"he shouted, and headed off in the wrong direction.

He realized his mistake just in the nick of time, as a wall of the approaching creatures cut him off.  
"There's no way out!"

"I could have you told that." Marvin groaned.

"What do we do?"  
Ford spotted some ancient-looking swords thrown against one wall. They were rusted and probably not very sharp, but better than nothing. "We'll have to fight our way out. Grab a sword!"  
  
Back at Gasforth Police Station,  six officers had finally managed to cram the Vogon into a cell.

And he wasn't too happy about it. "Let me out of here!" he demanded indignantly.

"Not till we find out what you're up to," said Inspector Grim.

"I've **told** you what I'm up to!" the creature retorted. "We're in the middle of demolishing the Zeta Nine star cluster to make way for a hyperspace bypass! The work's got to be done!"  
"Demolishing stars?" asked Grim's second . . . Constable Allen Rimmer.

Rimmer was new to Gasforth, having just transferred from the nearby town of Ruttletop. He'd been there less than a week, and already everyone hated him.  
It wasn't that he was a **complete** officious prat. He just seemed to take rules and regulations a little too seriously. There were rumors that he slept with his badge in one hand and truncheon in the other, just in case he were called to some emergency in the night.

The transfer had happened after his partner, one Melinda Kochanski, had left the force to spend more time with her family. Being shot in a shop burglary had changed her outlook on her job.

So here Rimmer was in Gasforth . . . and nobody wanted him.  
Oh, he would have got on well with Fowler, who was also a by-the-book man. But Fowler wasn't there, was he?

Behind him, Goody and Habib exchanged anxious looks...

"We can only hold him for 24 hours without cause," Rimmer was saying.   
"Twenty-four hours!" The Vogon was incensed. * "I'll be ready for the Old Vogons' Home by the time I get out of here!"

"Isn't being a green yucky thing reason enough?" Goody asked, and Habib gave him an elbow in the side.

On board the _Heart of Gold_, meanwhile . . . they had run out of drinks already. Or so they thought until Eddie pointed out Zaphod's secret stash.  
"You can't do this to him!" Frodo shouted. "He's had too much as it is!"  
"On the other hand, he seems to have forgotten all about you-know-what," Gandalf pointed out.

"My precious wants to know what this is." Gollum said to Eddie, holding up a bottle of Zaphod's Old Janx Spirit. "Is it like wicked strength lager?"  
"Oh, please," Eddie sneered. "This stuff makes wicked-strength lager look like lemonade!"  
Gollum grinned from ear to ear. It was not a pretty sight.

"My precious likes to hear that, yes."He opened the bottle...

"Is there any food around here?" asked Fowler, who was desperately hungry.

"The dispensin' machines are this way," Lister said.

"Splendid..."

Rimmer kept his distance from the machine. It had never liked him.

For some reason he couldn't put his finger on, however, this Fowler character looked oddly familiar. He wondered whether they might have crossed paths in a past life.

"Welcome to Jupiter Mining Corp Vending Service Number--" the machine began.

"Never mind that," Lister told the machine, "just get the man some food."  
"Certainly." the machine replied. "What can I get for you, sir?"

Fowler was staring open-mouthed at the machine. A vending machine that **talked**? He'd never heard of such a thing! "How--how does it do that?"

"Don't know," Lister admitted.

"Never mind, that, then."Fowler said. Clearing his throat, he told the machine, "Tea with two sugars and a chocolate frog, if you please."  
"What's a chocolate frog?" the machine inquired.

"Never mind--make that a chocolate hobnob." Fowler corrected.

"Sorry, I don't think I have any of those either. Want a Fun Size Crunchie Bar?"  
Fowler sighed. "I suppose so."  
There was a whir and a clunk.

The inspector picked up the crunchie bar, turned to Lister, and asked him, "What kind of place is this that doesn't even have a decent chocolate hobnob?"  
"It's a minin' ship," Lister explained. "Not much call for chocolate hobnobs, really."

"I see your point." Fowler said.

Then he did a double-take. **"Ship?"**  
Lister, Rimmer, and Kryten all looked at each other. Each thought one of the others had told him. He **had** to know by now . . .  
Cat wandered in. "Hey, buds!"

"_Ship?!!_" Fowler repeated dumbfoundedly.

"What's his problem?" Cat asked.

Fowler stared at Cat. "I don't think I've ever met someone," he said, "who wore such _interesting_ attire."

Cat grinned. "I can make you one, if you want!"

"Thank you," Fowler said, "but I think I'll stick with my uniform for the time being." He turned to Lister and asked him, "What on earth is a mining ship doing with a fashion boutique on board?"  
"Oh, Cat's outfits? That's a long story." Lister replied.  
Following Lister and his _Red Dwarf_ shipmates down the corridor, Fowler said, "Under the present circumstances, I've got plenty of time to listen."

"He's doing it again!" exclaimed Arthur, who was getting fed up with Marvin's predictions of gloom and doom in the midst of pitched battle with a horde of Orcs."Doesn't that tin-plated git ever know when to shut up?"  
"Nope,"said Zaphod, dodging a battle axe, "but that's part of his charm, really..."

"We've got to get out of here!"

"You really think so?" Arthur shouted sarcastically to Zaphod.

"Where can we go?" Ford shouted. "They're closing in on all sides!"

"I don't suppose anyone cares about this," Martin droned, "but..."

"No, we're a little busy now to care!"

"There's an escape route directly beneath us." Marvin said.

Ford, Arthur, and Zaphod all looked at each other.  
"** Now** he tells us!"

"Well, what the smeg are we waiting for?"

"Ford," Arthur said suddenly, "this all seems very familiar somehow . . ."

Ford blinked as the group rushed towards the escape route Marvin had alerted them to earlier. "What do you mean?"

"Like I've seen this before, or . . . read it."  
Arthur had been very young when he had borrowed a friend's copy of _Lord of the Rings_. He hadn't gotten much beyond the middle of the second book, but he remembered the scene in the mines of--  
"Moria," he said aloud. "I thought I recognized that name. Oh bloody hell, we have to get out of here!"  
"Have you been here before?" Ford asked. In all his time on Earth, the closest he'd gotten to literature were the TV listings.

"Not exactly, but I've got the passages about Moria committed to memory." Arthur said, pausing to slay an Orc."This is not someplace you want to stay for any great length of time if you can possibly avoid it..."

"What passages?" Zaphod asked. "How do you know about this place?"

"I read about in _Lord of the Rings_..."

"What's that?"  
"It's a book. Well, it's three books, actually, but I've never read to the end . . ."

The Orcs charged.

The three mortals swung their swords in the desperate hope that they would actually hit something.

"So, Earthman," Zaphod puffed, "you were saying about this book?"

Arthur tried to explain while defending himself at the same time, which wasn't easy. "Well, you see, it's like this . . ."

 Suddenly there was a loud roar from somewhere behind them. The Orcs scattered.

"Moria is a very nasty place . . ."

"Oh, God." Arthur covered his face with both hands. "I remember this part . . ."

Zaphod ducked a mace aimed squarely at his head. "Mind letting us in on the details, Earthman?"  
"I doubt they'll be very pleasant or interesting." Marvin droned, helping Ford into the secret escape passage.

"This bit gave me nightmares for weeks afterward . . ." Arthur moaned.

Glancing over his shoulder, Ford observed, "I can see why". A new horde of Orcs was closing in on them.  
"I knew it." Marvin said. "We're doomed."  
"Don't say that!" Arthur pleaded.

Meanwhile, back on the _Heart of Gold_, the Fellowship weren't having much better luck.

"This is madness,"Boromir said to himself, "pure madness...."

"No, it's lager."

"Lager?"Boromir repeated, staring dumbfoundedly at Gandalf.  
"Better than lager," Eddie told them cheerfully, "it's a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster!"

"A what?"

Eddie chortled,"Oh, like you guys don't know..."

"No, we don't," said Sam.

Eddie began rhapsodizing on the joys of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster . . .

...as elsewhere, Constable Rimmer and his fellow officers interrogated the Vogon.

"What is your name?" Rimmer demanded.

The Vogon rolled his eyes in annoyance. "For the millionth time..."

"I want you to spell it out. Properly."  
"I don't see why I should have to--"

Dawkins turned to Grim and whispered, "Is it too late to get Doyle back?"  
"I'm afraid so." Grim nodded. "He's already into the sixth week of his run on Broadway."  
"Can you believe it, Pat?"Habib said. "A bona fide extraterrestrial in our own station. MI6'll want to get their hands on him for sure..."

The Vogon looked at them all. "Em-Aye **_who_**?"

"**We're** asking the questions here, laddie!" Rimmer barked.

"God,"Dawkins muttered under her breath, "I can't believe I actually miss twit Kray."  
Meanwhile, at a top-secret MI6 outpost near London, a young agent with an eerily familiar face submitted his ID card to a security officer at the front gates."Lister, Roger E., Agent No.65472-G3, here on official business..."

Arthur had just remembered what had happened in the book, and it wasn't good.

"You don't look so good, Earthman."Zaphod said as Ford and Marvin motioned him to follow them into the tunnel. "What's the prob?"

He kept repeating the same word, over and over again: "Balrog."  
  
  
  
*On the Vogon homeworld, each planetary revolution is seventy-two years long. That makes the hours very long indeed.


	2. Help! I'm On The Ceiling!

**THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE _RED DWARF_**

CHAPTER 2 

**Lost, are you? It's been a confusing chapter, hasn't it? Well, luckily for you, here I am to sort it all out! My name is Eddie, and I am the computer on board the _Heart of Gold_!**

**Right now I'm hosting a bunch of idiots who don't even know what a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster is! Shocking, isn't it? Seems they got caught in one of those rare time/space irregularities that brought them here, and sent my regular crew down to where these people are supposed to be.**

**And if you think _that's _strange, you should see what's going on in the small English town of ****Gasforth****. History is about to repeat itself, before it's even happened. (Makes perfect sense if you think four-dimensionally.) Meanwhile they seem to be missing an Inspector, and Bob only knows where _he _is . . .**

"Say again?" Ford asked.

Ford looked in his knapsack for his copy of _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_, thinking that might help.  
He found that it had somehow been transformed into _The Hitchhiker's Guide to Middle Earth_. "What the smeg--?"

Nevertheless, he checked to see if "Balrog" had an entry.  
To his surprise, it did. And it scared the living daylights out of him.

_Balrog: a type of demon found mainly in deep caves and mines . . . known for its sharp claws and vicious temper._

"How do we stop it?" Ford wondered aloud.

Arthur's response was short and to the point: "We can't."

"I knew it." Marvin droned.  
So the only option left for the marooned space travelers was to dive like mad into the hidden tunnel and hope Balrog didn't come in after them. With Ford pulling the door closed behind them, the foursome jumped in and raced as far as they could, as fast as they could, to the end of that tunnel, escaping the Balrog's jaws by a mere 0.873 milliseconds. *  
  
*(Elapsed time as officially calculated by the Pan-Galactic Encyclopedia)

  
MI6 Special Agent Roger Lister greeted his superior with a brisk salute and a slight scent of curry. "Must you always stuff your face with vindaloo before you report to the office?" the older man grumbled.  
"Can't help it, sir," Agent Lister replied. "I've always had a thing for curries. Runs in the family." Sitting down, he helped himself to a swig from the office coffee pot. "Now then, what's this about an ET in Gasforth?"

"We got the call this morning that there's a, quote, green thing, unquote, at Gasforth Police Station."  
"Green thing?" Lister gaped at him. "That's the description you got?"  
"That's what they gave me."

"They didn't happen to mention if this 'green thing' was armed, did they?" Lister inquired.  
"No mention of personal weaponry, although the desk sergeant, one Patricia Dawkins, did indicate that the--whatever it is--had made threats against the life of one Tricia McMillan." The older man, known only as Colonel Holland (behind his back some of his colleagues called him 'Holly'), handed Lister a map listing directions to the Gasforth police station.  
Lister poured himself another coffee. "So why me on this case? Why not Selby or Peterson?"

"Because an acquaintance of yours has just been transferred there." Holly slid a photo across the desk.  
Lister stared down at it in growing horror. "Oh, no. Not him. Anyone but him."  
"I understand you were bunkmates in the Academy."  
"He drove me nuts! His shoe-trees and his Risk campaign books--I never once saw him play a game, but he could go on about it for hours! And he collected slides of telegraph poles!"  
"So the man has a few quirks."  
"Sir, that's rather like saying that Hitler didn't like people much."  
"Nevertheless, he's our in. You've got to make contact with him, and find out what he knows."  
Lister looked at the photograph again. Of all the people in the universe he'd hoped never to see again, top of the list was Rimmer.

"All right," he groaned finally. "How soon d'you want me down there?"

Constable Rimmer, who had no idea that the former thorn in his side was about to reappear, continued questioning the Vogon.  
"How big is your space fleet? What kind of weapons do they have? Can we have some?"  
"Okay, I think that's enough," Grim said, shoving Rimmer aside. "Go get yourself a coffee, eh, Allen?"  
"But, sir--"  
"I'll take over from here, Constable."

Getting the vague impression that Grim wasn't quite taking him seriously, Constable Rimmer left . . . mere moments before Lister came in the front door.

"He's got awfully long hair for an MI6 bloke," Habib observed to Gladstone.  
Gladstone agreed. "I've seen less hair on the floor of the town barbershop."  
"Special Agent Roger E. Lister, here on official business," Lister said, showing his ID card to Inspector Grim. "Now, where's the prisoner?"

"In the cells. I'll take you to 'im."

As they were walking to the holding area, Lister briefly glanced over his shoulder just in time to see Rimmer coming back with his coffee. He quickened his pace, before Rimmer could see him. He'd prefer to put off this awkward moment as long as possible. Another twenty years would do.

"What the smeg?" Constable Rimmer muttered to himself. He thought he saw someone he knew, but it couldn't be.

"Excuse me," he said to Constable Habib, "but who's the chap with the knee-length hair that just went down to the holding area with Grim?"  
"Oh, that's Special Agent Lister. He's with MI6. Very important business, that."

If you had told Rimmer that his grandfather was Kim Philby, you couldn't have upset him more.  
"Lister?" he screeched in undisguised horror.

Lister heard him and stopped dead in his tracks.  
_Oh, smeg. Please, God, let it be a lager-induced hallucination. The absolute **last** person on this planet I want to encounter is Allen Mussolini Rimmer._

Just then, who should happen to pass him but . . .

Rimmer.

"How **nice** to see you again," Rimmer said with forced cheerfulness. Deep down, however, he was thinking:_ Dear God, where are the IRA when you need them?_

"Hi, Rimmer. Long time no see." _Pity it couldn't stay that way._

"So, they . . . er . . . they sent to check out our prisoner, did they?"

"Yes. Alien, is he?"  
"Oh, yes. Seems to be, anyway."

Watching their strained attempts at civility, Dawkins said to Habib, "You know, Maggie, maybe it's just me, but I'm getting the impression that they don't like each other very much."

"Really?" Habib replied. "Where would you get an idea like that?"

"Constable Rimmer is trying to hang a sign on Agent Lister's back that reads 'Attention Snipers: Aim Bullets Here'." Dawkins replied.

"He's got it upside-down."

And what of our heroes from the _Heart of Gold_, you may ask?

The effects of the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster are described in _The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy_ as:

_1) roughly like standing in the middle of an atomic explosion_

_2) can sometimes last for years afterwards _

_3) reduce your internal organs to quivering shadows of their former selves_

_4) in short, do not try this at home. Or anywhere else, for that matter, unless you have your will made out and your affairs in order._

And Gollum had already had two, which was a feat in itself. After the first one, it usually wasn't possible to order a second. But somehow Gollum had survived his first taste of the drink...

However, the next person to sample the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster was not so lucky. It took just two drops for Merry to be out cold, and possibly even comatose. 

That was bad enough; unfortunately, it wasn't the worst of it. Merry was having very vivid hallucinations, and violent twitching fits to boot...

Pippin glared at Eddie (or would have if he'd known where to look). "Nice going!"

"Uh oh..."

"Isn't there an antidote or something?" asked Sam.  
"Hang on, Sammy," Eddie said, " I'm looking!"

The Heart of Gold was not a big ship, generally speaking. It was, however, just big enough to get lost in.

Which explained why Gollum was wandering around. He could have used a bathroom, if he knew what one was.

"My precious has terrible hangover." he groaned.

Things were not going any better in the mines of Moria.  
"We've got to get out of here!" Arthur kept insisting.  
"Keep it cool, Earthman," said Zaphod. "Maybe we can reason with this Baldog thing."

"Trust me, Zaphod," Arthur replied, "it can't be done.Balrog is like Godzilla, Satan, and my PE teacher all rolled into one. It'll have us for breakfast if we don't get the smeg out of here now."

"And how exactly are we supposed to get out? Do you see any exit signs? An express elevator, perhaps?"

"What about that tunnel Marvin mentioned?" Ford asked.

"I wouldn't take my advice," Marvin interjected. "No one ever does."

"There's a first time for everything." Zaphod said, yanking the android into the tunnel. The others, only too happy to get out of Balrog's way, wasted little time diving in after him.  
"Please," Arthur prayed to a God he hadn't exactly been on the best of terms with lately, "let this tunnel lead somewhere safe. I'd rather not be confronted by any more vicious monsters."  
  
And apropos of vicious monsters, that leads us to the historic encounter between MI6 Special Agent Roger Lister and the Vogon incarcerated in the holding area of Gasforth Police Headquarters. While it certainly wasn't the first time he'd met an unpleasant individual--and bloody sure wouldn't be the last--it would prove to be the most memorable.  
"What is that?" he blurted when he first set eyes on the Vogon. "It looks like something I threw up in the loo on my last night at Club 18-30!"  
"That, Agent Lister," Constable Rimmer sighed, "is the prisoner."  
"Well, if being ugly's become a crime, this git's lookin' at life without parole for sure!"

"It speaks English!" Rimmer whispered urgently.  
The Vogon looked up at them. "When are you people planning on letting me out of here?" he demanded.

"Soon as you tell us what the smeg you're doin' here." Lister replied.  
"I don't suppose," the Vogon said, "you happen to know which dimension this is?"

"As opposed to what?" Lister asked.  
The Vogon sighed. It was impossible to explain multi-dimensional physics to someone who didn't understand the theory, but he took his best shot.

"All right, try to pay attention . . ."

Lister tried, but he soon became utterly confused by all the polysyllabic jargon. "Run that by me again?"

Rimmer, on the other hand, had figured it out within five minutes (which was ironic, considering he'd flunked science twice in school). "So you're saying that our Earth is one of many different possible realities, all coexisting side by side?"

"Exactly." the Vogon replied.

"So how do you tell 'em apart?" Lister asked.  
The Vogon sighed deeply. Some beings just didn't get it.

Elsewhere in the station, Sgt. Dawkins wondered if she should even bother going home. It wouldn't be the same without Raymond there rattling his newspaper. Most people considered him a bit of an old fuddy-duddy, but he meant the world to her. If she never saw him again . . .  
No, no, mustn't think like that. He'll turn up sooner or later.  
I hope.

On board the Red Dwarf, meanwhile, Fowler was thinking about Patricia.

If I get out of this, he thought, maybe I will propose to her.

"Holly," Lister called out, "have you worked out what happened yet?"  
"No, but I think I have an idea what went wrong."  
"Translation: I haven't got a clue, but I'll take a stab at it," Rimmer said.

"Smeg off, Rimmer." Lister said.

"If only we had Ms. Kochanski here to help us again," Kryten lamented.

"Oh smeg," Rimmer grumbled, "not that snooty cow again."

"You can't!" Lister insisted. "Not after she wanted to be turned off!"

"Pardon my asking," Fowler said, "but who's this Kochanski person you're talking about?"

"I can erase her memory of wanting to be erased," Holly said. "Or something like that."

Fowler cast an annoyed glare at Holly. "I beg your pardon, I have an outstanding question here . . ."

"I'm sorry?" Holly looked puzzled.  
"Who is this person? And why on Earth would she want to be erased, whatever that is?"

Lister turned to Fowler and said, "It's a long story."  
"Try me." Fowler replied.

While Holly went on and on . . . Lister poured Fowler a wicked strength lager.

"Are you sure you should be doing that?" Rimmer asked. "Poor chap's confused enough as it is."  
"I always think better with a lager or two under me belt," Lister replied.

Rimmer gave him a sardonic look. "I don't think he would."

"Actually," Fowler said, "I could do with a good stiff drink right about now."  
So Lister handed him the can . . .

Rimmer ducked under the scanner table.

And no wonder, since the lager Lister was serving to Inspector Fowler was Hansen's Super Wicked Strength Lager, the same kind that had triggered Gollum's drunken shenanigans inside Parrot's not too long ago. Rimmer had the creeping suspicion that within five minutes, if not sooner, Fowler would be hopelessly inebriated.

However, he turned out to be wrong.  
It took ten minutes.

"Oh smeg," Rimmer said when he got his first glimpse of the lager's effects on Fowler.

Kryten rushed to prepare some black coffee. Strong black coffee.

Meanwhile, on board the Heart of Gold . . .

Eddie was explaining to Gandalf how the interdimensional mixup had occurred.  
"Okay, ya with me on this so far, big guy?" the gregarious computer asked the wizard.  
"Not entirely." Gandalf admitted.  
"Okay then," Eddie said, "let's take it from the top. The whole mess started when Zaphod Beeblebrox found a neat little gizmo called the Reality Flipper in the laboratory of a company called Galactic Inventions Limited . . ."

"I sense a flashback coming on," said Frodo.  
"Are we going to go all wavy?" asked Pippin.

"Not if the shield generators are working." Eddie replied. "Anyway, like I was saying, Zaphod found the Reality Flipper and liked it so much he bought it from the company for five million galactic megaquid. Thought it would be handy for popping down to resort planets for vacation."  
"So what went wrong?" Sam said.

"What usually goes wrong with complicated hardware built by the lowest bidder: it didn't work.

"He wanted to go to the vacation planet Mazia, but instead it put him on the prison planet Mozia and dumped you guys off on board the Red Dwarf . . ."  
"That explains quite a bit." Pippin said.  
"Yes, sir!" Eddie agreed cheerfully. "Anyhoo, yours truly soon figured it out and whisked him back to the Heart of Gold. We gave it a quick repair job and took another try at the same time your wizard buddy was getting ready to haul you guys back to Middle Earth . . . and things just completely went all to pieces."

"Meaning?" Boromir prompted.

"As near as I can figure, two other individuals have been displaced from their normal time/space locus."  
"And for those of us who don't speak computer?"

"There's a Vogon sitting in a British jail cell and a Gasforth copper wandering the corridors of a nearly-abandoned JMC mining ship."

"A what where, and a who which?"

Eddie accessed his online version of the Hitchhiker's Guide. The entry for Vogons came up, complete with visuals.

"Repulsive little git, isn't he?" Aragorn said.

"What does this Vogon have to do with us?" asked Frodo.

"Plenty, if we have to bring him back."

Blank looks all around.

"See, he was hyperspeeding to demolish a dead planet the same time you guys were trying to get back to Middle Earth . . ."

"And he got in our way?"  
"That's about it. Then something even worse happened . . ."

"Worse?"

"The machine hiccuped."

"Is that bad?"

"At a time like this, definitely!" Eddie said.

"What did that do?"  
"Are you kidding? It smegged everything up!"

"Well, everything's certainly smegged up to a fare-thee-well." said Arnold J. Rimmer to Holly." How in Titan are we going to fix this one, eh?"

"I have no idea," Holly said.  
"Well, that's just wonderful!"

Fowler, meanwhile, was giving a very off-key rendition of an old drinking song he'd learned at university . . . only he hadn't been much of a drinker, and hadn't learned half the words. So he made up his own.

"Smeggin' 'ell, Kryten," Lister said, "isn't there anything you can do to make him stop?"  
"There are several options," Kryten replied, "but half of them require doing things which violate my programming."  
"What about pouring ice water on him?" Lister suggested.  
"That just may work, sir." Kryten ordered a bucket of ice water from one of the food dispensers.

The song went on and on . . . until Kryten emptied the bucket on Fowler's head.

Rimmer went and hid under the scanner table again.

"AAAAGHGHGGHGHH!" Fowler spluttered. "What in the bloody hell did you do that for?"

"You're inebriated, sir."

"What? Are you mad?"

"No, sir."

"But all I had was--" Then he looked at the label for the first time.  
"Oh my God." He'd never been good at handling wicked strength lager, no matter who made it. "Why didn't someone tell me what this was?"

At that moment, Lister began to realize that something big was at work here. Looking at the scanner table, he noticed a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy perched atop it. He picked it up....

"This is interestin'." He looked for the entry for Earth. It read, "Earth: Mostly Harmless"  
He stared at it in shock. "That's it?" There had to be more to it than that.  
And sure enough, he found: "Except Liverpool."

"Liverpool?" Lister said. "What the smeg's wrong with Liverpool?"

Rimmer gave him a funny look.

"What the smeg is that supposed to mean?"

"You figure it out. I'm still trying to work out how we're going to get Inspector Six-Pack here home." Rimmer said.  
Suddenly they both froze. What exactly was a copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide doing on board Red Dwarf to begin with?

Lister backed away from it slowly, as if it might explode. "Something really smeggin' weird's going on around 'ere."

"You're telling me," said Holly.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Middle Earth . . .

"I thought this was the way out!"  
"No, this is the way out!"  
"There is no way out."  
"Shut up, Marvin!"

The crew of the Heart of Gold was somewhat lost . . . and the balrog was still on the loose.

"Zaphod, do me a favor." Arthur said.  
"What's that, Earthman?" Zaphod asked.  
"The next time you find an advanced technological device you desperately want to buy . . ."

"What?"  
"Lose the catalog."

Somehow, after hours of wandering and bickering, they managed to lose the balrog . . . and find the way out.  
Now they just had to deal with the problem of not knowing where they were.

Tricky enough under the best circumstances.

"I think Lothlorien is that green bit off that way," Arthur said, pointing.

"You sure about that?" Ford asked.

"It looks green."

"It might be poison leaves." Marvin suggested in his usual gloomy tone.

"Well, they wouldn't affect you, would they?" Zaphod said. "So you get to be our advance scout."  
"I suppose," Marvin droned, "I couldn't talk you out of it? Not that there'd be any point anyway."

Arthur thought it over for all of half a second. "You'll be fine," he said unconvincingly.

He cautiously stepped forward . . . 

And a hail of arrows flew through the air from seemingly nowhere.

"Bloody hell!" Arthur screamed, just barely managing to get out of the way in time.  
  


By an eerie coincidence, at that exact same moment, at MI6 headquarters in London, Colonel Holland was saying those very same words over the phone to Agent Lister.

"It's a real alien, Holly. Not a bloke in a suit. Walked all around him and I couldn't see a zipper."

"Lister, you have got to be pulling my leg." Colonel Holland insisted.

"I wish I were, sir," Lister said. "He keeps goin' on about dimensions. Thinks he's in the wrong one or somethin'."

"Dimensions, you said?" That got Colonel Holland's attention in a big way. "Hang on . . ." He took out his cell phone and dialed the office number for Professor Edward Crichton at the Oxford University science department. "There's somebody who I think might be interested to hear this."

"Bring him on," Lister said. "The more the merrier."

At Oxford's science department, a fairly interesting lecture was going on.

Or so Professor Crichton had been told; he himself was busy cavorting in his office with one of his secretaries when his cell phone went off.

"Oh, damn."  
"Don't answer it," Camille said.

He tried to ignore it . . . but, as he had the ring set to a particularly annoying melody, it was impossible. He had done this, knowing how much he hated to answer the phone, so that he'd have no choice.

He finally picked up the phone and said, "Crichton here. This better be damn important."

"I'm afraid it is," Holland said.

Crichton listened as Holland outlined the situation. "You're kidding!" he gasped.

"I recommend you join Lister at this Gasforth police station. It sounds like something big is going down."

Crichton sprang to his feet. "How big?"

Camille looked disappointed. When that excited tone crept into his voice, everything else was forgotten. Pity.

"I'll get right on it." Hanging up, he looked around and asked, "Have you seen my trousers?"

Arthur wished he'd had the patience or the inclination to learn Elvish. It would have helped immensely in the current situation. Fortunately, however, the Elves spoke English. (Or a very close approximation of same.)

"Can you tell us where we are?" Ford asked them.

The blonde one on the left said, "This is Rivendell, sir. You be strangers here . . . who are you and how come you here?"

"I thought we were in that Lorien place . . . did we get turned around somehow?"

Glancing at his surroundings, Arthur said, "Apparently we did."

"Maybe we weren't where we thought we were."  
"Or maybe the geography of Middle-Earth's changed."

In any case, our heroes agreed, it was necessary to find out where the man in charge might be and if he could help them return to _Heart of Gold.  
  
_

Meanwhile, back on the _Red Dwarf . . . things had improved somewhat, but not much.  
Cat had gone off to take another of his beauty naps, while Holly, Fowler, Lister, and Rimmer all tried to work out how to get Fowler back where he belonged._

"Can't we re-cross the time holes somehow?" Lister asked.

"Easier said than done, Dave." Holly replied. "You have to find one first."

Rimmer spoke for all parties concerned when he said, "So we're screwed, then?"

"If we could just get hold of some kind of dimensional transport thingy . . ." Holly said.

"Where?" Lister asked. "Dimensional Transports 'R Us?"

Holly shook her computer-generated head."No, not exactly...just give me a minute to think...."  
"That could take more than a minute, I should think." Rimmer quipped.

"If only we had someone really intelligent on the case . . . " Fowler mused.

Holly overheard. "Excuse me! I happen to have an IQ of 6000!"  
Lister and Rimmer looked at her dubiously.  
"I do! It's recorded in my specs!"  
"Yeah, but they're three million years old! Your warranty's expired!"

"How do we get down from here?" asked a very frightened Merry, who along with Pippin was clinging to the ceiling, thanks to a malfunctioning artificial gravity machine.

"I wish I knew!" Pippin shouted back.

"Just don't ask me to make you any tea," said Eddie. "That's what started this whole mess."

"Tea?"

"That fellow in the bathrobe asked for a cup of tea . . ."

"Who?"

"The Earth man . . . Dent, I think."

Merry blinked. "You mean, all this happened just because he asked for some tea?"

"I think so. I'm having a heck of a time sorting it all out."

Frodo came in. "I can't seem to find . . ." He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Merry and Pippin bouncing around the ceiling. "What the devil's going on here?!"

"Something about tea, I think."

"Hi, Frodo!" said Eddie.

"Eddie, do you know what's going on?"

"Okay, here goes." Eddie said, and launched into a fascinating if somewhat baffling account of Arthur and Zaphod's mishap with the dimensional body swapper.

"Um . . . hello? Can someone please get us down from here?"

Eddie stopped midsentence. "What? Oops! Sorry." He got the gravity sorted out . . . and Merry and Pippin gently floated to the floor.

"That's better."   
There was a bloodcurdling scream from down the hall.

"What was that?"

"How should I know?"

"Sounds like your buddy Gollum to me!" Eddie volunteered.

"He's not our--" Frodo began. The scream interrupted him.

The hobbits ran as fast as their little legs would carry them in the direction of the scream . . . and found Gollum trapped in a running shower, and not liking it one bit. "Help my precious!"

"Is it too hot?"  
"No! Cold! Iss too cold!"

"This coffee is too bloody cold!" Inspector Grim complained to Constable Habib back at the Gasforth police station.

"I'm sorry, sir," Habib said. "But, you know, it's been a bit . . . busy 'round here . . ."

"Well, have someone make some fresh coffee!"

"I think tea would be better in your case." Sgt.Dawkins suggested. "You seem more tense than usual . . ."

"Who wouldn't be tense? I've got an alien in the Interrogation Room! For all we know we could have an invasion force parked the other side of the moon!"

"Sir, by the look of him, he couldn't park a trolley* at Sainsbury's." Habib quipped.

"Looks can be deceiving!"

They heard a loud BURP!  
"Not in this case, sir." Dawkins said.

"Are we talking about the same one? The one that's green and all knobbly?"

Indeed they were, the same green knobbly life form to which Professor Crichton would soon be introduced.

His first words were, "Dear God!"

"Trust me, Professor Crichton," Constable Rimmer remarked, "God had nothing to do with it."

"For the record," the Vogon said, "I find you equally disgusting."

So," Crichton said to Agent Lister, "how did you get hold of him?"

"He just turned up, in the street."

Professor Crichton blinked. "You mean he just popped out of thin air?"

"That's the way it appears."  
"Hmmm . . ."

"Dave, something just appeared on my scanner . . ." Holly said to Lister back on Red Dwarf.

"What is it?"  
"It looks like a big yellow thing . . ."  
Rimmer rolled his eyes. "Your command of the language is astonishing."

"Hang on," Lister said. "Picking it up on the scanner scope. On screen, Holly."

Holly put it on the screen.

"It looks like a flying brick," said Cat.  
But it was actually a Vogon constructor ship.

"What the smeg?"

"There's a transmission coming in," Holly said.  
"On speakers," said Rimmer.

"Attention alien ship," the voice boomed, "this is the Vogon Constructor Fleet Vessel . . ." And he made a howling, gargling noise that apparently didn't translate. "We demand that you return our captain at once, or else . . ."

"We haven't got your smegging captain!" Rimmer snapped indignantly. Looking at the Vogon, he thought: _And we sure as smeg wouldn't want to, either._

"You lie! It will be a pleasure to demolish your putrid planet!"  
"Yeah?" Lister shouted. "Come over 'ere and say that!"

"I will!"

Rimmer muttered, "Lister, I don't think you should have said that."

"How else are we gonna prove to 'im that his captain's not here?" Lister muttered back.

"I don't want that thing over here!"

"I'm not particularly keen on the idea myself." Fowler admitted.

Kryten came over and whispered, "The audio link is still on."  
"I beg your pardon?"  
"He can hear us!"

"Oh, smeg . . ."

**Will the _Red Dwarf crew survive a Vogon invasion? Will the Gasforth police station? Will Hobbits get stuck to the ceiling of the __Heart of Gold again? Stay tuned for the answers! (Always wanted to say that!)_**

*British slang for shopping cart


	3. You Don't Like Reggie Wilson, What?

**THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE _RED DWARF_**

CHAPTER 3 

**Welcome to Part 3! Well, a lot's happened since we began, hasn't it? Oh, by the way, I'm PC Kevin Goody. Right now I'm making coffee for the rest of the chaps. Been a bit of excitement round here—we've had an actual ALIEN turn up on our doorstep! Those chaps from Scotland Yard are with him now. MI6, I think they are.**

**We still don't know where Inspector Fowler is, but I have an idea: he and the alien somehow switched places. So Inspector Fowler is on the alien's spaceship . . . somewhere. I suppose he'll come round eventually.**

**Also, does anyone know why my copy of _Lord of the Rings  is all different? I've never actually read it, just seen the film . . . but I'm pretty sure there wasn't anyone with two heads in it. I'd have remembered._**

**Anyway, enjoy the story! Now let's just hope I don't drop the tray again . . . Inspector Grim's just had his trousers pressed.**

There was a shimmer in the air . . . and in less time than it took Reggie Wilson to come up with a terrible idea for a CD single, the Vogon materialized in Red Dwarf's drive room.

Rimmer went into Cringe Mode. "Terribly sorry about that last remark, Your Alienness. No disrespect intended at all."

"Look, man," Lister said, "your captain isn't here."

"He **must be!"**

"No, he isn't." Holly insisted. "I've scanned this whole ship top to bottom, and he's nowhere in sight."  
The Vogon would have raised his eyebrows in astonishment if he'd had any. "Then where is he?"

"Lost."  
Rimmer rolled his eyes again. "We **know that, Holly . . ." At that moment he was thinking that they were all truly in deep smeg . . .**

. . . which is exactly what the Heart of Gold's crew were thinking when they saw elven archers aiming straight for them.  
"Can't we all just get along?" Zaphod said to a wary Arwen Evenstar. She didn't know what to make of this strange creature with two heads, or the metallic man-like creature beside him.

"We're all going to die," Marvin droned.  
"Stop saying that! We are not!"

Arthur, thankful that he had the Babel fish handy, looked at Arwen and said, "Excuse me, miss . . ."

The look she gave him made him want to crawl under something till it was safe.

"We, uh, seem to have gotten lost."

"You are human."  
"Yes. Yes, I am."  
"And what of these?" She looked from Zaphod to Ford to Marvin, and back to Arthur.

Arthur took a deep breath (it wasn't the first time he'd done it, nor would it be the last). "They are . . . foreigners. My traveling companions." He hoped the Babel fish could translate that accurately. Wasn't there a language in which "stranger" meant the same thing as "slave"?

"Interesting choice of traveling companions, to be sure." Arwen said.

"You're pretty interesting yourself," Zaphod said, eyeing the top of her dress.

Arthur gave him a "not now" look and continued. "Can you help us find--" He rummaged through the cluttered attic of his brain in search of the right word. "The Ring-bearer?"

Arwen's eyes widened in amazement. How did this stranger know of the Ring-Bearer? Could he be a messenger from the gods?

She motioned to her father, Elrond, who immediately came to her side.

"What's going on?" the Elf Lord demanded.

"Well, Your Highness," Ford said, "We seem to have gotten lost. Arthur, I don't suppose you have that book handy so we can check what page we're on?"

Arthur checked his pockets. "No, I don't have it."  
"Book? What is this?"

"OK," Ford said, "let me try to explain this to you, Your Highness . . . it is Your Highness, isn't it?"

Several of the Elves snickered. That wasn't a good sign.

"Do something," Ford whispered urgently.  
"What? This wasn't in the book!"

"This is going to turn out badly." Marvin droned.  
  
  


Thousands of light-years (and at least one dimension) away, in the corporate headquarters of Galactic Inventions Limited, the board of directors was convening an emergency meeting. The company's top scientists had finally started to notice the problems the Reality Flipper was causing.

Thank Bob the Legal department had included so much fine print that there wasn't the chance of any lawsuits.

Or so the executives thought until an android summons server arrived at their boardroom with a notice that they were all being subpoenaed.

The charges were ridiculous. They were insane (the charges, that is, not the executives).

"Is this for real?" one of the executives asked. "All of history will collapse?"

"That's what it says on the subpoena." another executive answered.

"But we didn't do anything!"

"Are you sure?"

"What's this about 'space/time anomalies'?"

"Who on Magrathea is 'the Jupiter Mining Corporation'?"

"They're not on Magrathea, that's the whole point! You lot have smegged up four separate time lines . . ."

There was total silence in the boardroom (a rare event).  
"You've also played havoc with the fabric of reality and done Bob knows what kind of damage to our balance sheets for this fiscal quarter . . ."  
The silence was broken by a horrified collective gasp.  
  
  


In the Gasforth police station, Habib and Trillian talked over coffee.  
"So you're from around here?"

"Yeah, kinda." Trillian said.

"How'd you get into outer space?"  
"Well, it started at a party . . ." Trillian then launched into a short but impressively detailed review of her time with Zaphod.

"Wow."

"Yeah." Trillian said. "So Maggie, you seein' anybody right now?"

"Not really. The last bloke I dated turned out to be interested in Kevin." She nodded towards Goody.

Professor Crichton, with Camille in tow, pulled into the police station's car park. "Where can I find Inspector Raymond Fowler?" he asked Gladstone.

"Your guess is as good as mine."

Goody heard this and said, "He just vanished in a puff of smoke, he did. But if you want to talk to Inspector Grim, his office's just round the corner."

In his office, Grim wished he too could vanish in a puff of smoke. He didn't want to deal with this monumental cock-up, especially with a crucial promotion at stake.

"Are you Inspector Grim?" asked a tall man with a clipboard in one hand. "I'm Professor Edward Crichton."

"Are you here on official business?"

"Indeed, I am. It's about the extraterrestrial you have locked up in your holding area . . ."

"You know about that?"

"Colonel Holland of MI6 told me about it."

"Who? Oh, Lister's boss. I suppose you could see him . . ." _Anything to get you out of my office in a hurry, Grim thought. He stood up. "Right this way . . ."_

Back on _Red Dwarf, Fowler and Lister were consulting the __Guide to see if they could find anything about the Reality Flipper._

"Nothin'."  
"Must not be fully up-to-date, then."

Rimmer threw up his hands. "Just smegging lovely."

Cat made one of his rare appearances then. "Anyone seen my mousse?"

"We've got slightly more important things to think about at the moment, laddie." Fowler answered in understandable irritation.

"Nothing's more important than my hair looking good!"

"I beg to differ, Mr. Cat." Fowler retorted indignantly.

"That's only cause yours looks like it's made of plastic!"  
"Cat!" Lister said. "Be nice!"  
"Nice? He insulted my hair!"  
"I beg your pardon! I did nothing of the sort!"

"If we could all calm down for a moment, sirs," Kryten interjected at that moment, "I think I may have found something that could help us . . ."

"This better work."

The foursome them accompanied Kryten to the ship's science lab. "Here you can see what appears to be a crude dimensional transporter device. The science lab was working on it just before the accident that wiped out the crew."

"Not the teleporter again?" Lister groaned.   
"Teleporter?" asked Fowler.  
"We wanted to test this thing to see if we could travel to other planets. So we end up nearly being executed by Nazis, taken prisoner by Elvis, and watched Rimmer teach Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and Stan Laurel how to be vicious killing machines."*  
Fowler blinked. "I don't quite follow you."

"Trust me, bud," Cat said, "you don't want to."

"No, this is a completely different device," Kryten said.  
"That doesn't mean it's better, though. This one could swap our heads or somethin'."

Thinking of Sgt.Dawkins, Fowler said, "Well, let's give it a go, anyway. If it does swap our heads, we won't be any worse off than we are now."

Cat gave him a look. "I don't want you taking care of my hair!"

"Let's just try it, all right?" Rimmer sighed.  
  
  


Everyone else involved in this interdimensional merry-go-round were themselves searching for a way out.

In the boardroom of Galactic Inventions Limited, an atmosphere of near-total hysteria had set in.

"Open the window! I want to jump!"  
"Get in line, idiot!"

"Gentlemen, please," a voice said calmly, "suicide isn't the answer to your problems . . ."

"If you can think of anything better, let us know!"

On board the _Heart of Gold, Aragorn and Boromir gazed with interested at the Reality Flipper._

"How does it work?"

"It's on Page 4 of the manual." Eddie said. "See that bright red switch on top?"

"Yes . . ."

"That's the power switch."

"What next?"

"Put your thumb on the little scanner thingy there..."

Hesitation. "Is this . . . safe?"

"Sure it is!"

"I don't trust that machine," whispered Legolas.

"This may be our only chance to get home," countered Boromir. "Would you refuse it so quickly?"

Back at Gasforth Police Station, Agent Lister, Constable Rimmer, and Professor Crichton crowded into the cell with the Vogon.

Professor Crichton, naturally, had a lot of questions . . . most of which were too technical for the Vogon to answer.  
"Look, I just stomp around and shout at people. I'm not a rocket scientist."

"All right then," Crichton said, "let me try to put it in simpler terms...."

"We're gonna be here all smeggin' day," Lister moaned to Rimmer.

"And all night." Rimmer answered.

"What is taking that lot so long?" Inspector Grim was getting more and more impatient by the minute.....

"Sir, Scotland Yard is on Line 1."  
"Tell them I'll call them back!"

"They say it's important, sir."

"Oh, all right." He picked up the phone...

Meanwhile . . . Eddie was continuing to explain to Boromir and Aragorn the workings of the Reality Flipper.

"Then you put your left hand here . . ."  
"Yes?"  
Eddie went on in a singsong voice. "You put your left hand out, you put your left hand in, and you shake it all about--"

"You haven't been into the Wicked Strength Lager, have you?" Aragorn said, rolling his eyes.

"Me?" Eddie said. "Heck no! I'm a computer! I can't drink anything!"

"Is there a computer equivalent, perchance?"

"Nope."

"Someone turn this thing off!" came a shout from Pippin, who was stuck to the ceiling in the next room thanks to a malfunction in the ship's gravity field. (Again. The _Heart of Gold was notorious for its malfunctioning gravity generators.)_

"But nobody even asked for tea!" Pippin tried frantically to pull himself off the ceiling.

"Want a little help with that?" Eddie said.  
"No--NO!"  
Too late. Pippin dropped like a rock . . . and landed on Merry.

"Get off! Get off!"  
"Sorry! Blame Eddie! He stuck me to the ceiling and then dropped me!"

"I did not!"

Back in Middle Earth, Arthur and Arwen were trying to work out . . . well, everything. Seeing as how the fabric of reality had been twisted up like a soft-baked pretzel, it was impossible to know where to begin.

Nevertheless, Arthur started with what he remembered from the book and worked from there.

Naturally, it wasn't an easy task.

"Right," he began.   
And then stopped, because he didn't know what came next.

Fortunately, Ford stepped in, and offered a more comprehensive explanation.

The Elves looked at him as though he didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

"We're done for." Marvin sighed.

"Oh, don't be so negative," Zaphod said. "Let them groove on his vibe . . ."

And grooving they were . . . odd as that seemed. It was as if Ford had tapped into some kind of common frequency. The actual words didn't matter.

Maybe he was part elf. Maybe Elves were part aliens. Who knew? 

 Arwen found herself thinking that this Ford person was really an interesting man to say the least. Even a bit . . . attractive?  
Or was that taking it too far?

In any case, he made a lot more sense than the metal one. Or the one with two heads. They were baffling creatures...

Meanwhile, back at Gasforth Police Station, Gladstone and Agent Lister were discussing important matters.

"Is it just me, or is Shirley Bassey the greatest singer in the world?"

"She's all right," Gladstone admitted, "but she doesn't hold a candle to Gloria Hunniford."

"Gloria Hunniford? Get outta town!"

"She has a voice like-"

The debate was abruptly terminated when Rimmer declared, "You gentlemen are both wrong. The greatest voice in the history of the world belongs to none other than . . . Reggie Wilson."

"REGGIE WILSON?"  
The entire station stopped in their tracks and their heads swiveled to the trio.

"Dear God, man, are you INSANE?!" Dawkins spluttered.  
"Reggie Wilson is a hack!" Habib insisted. "He couldn't carry a tune if he had six lorries** to help him!"  
"He's absolutely brilliant!" Rimmer insisted. "His cover of Springsteen's 'Born to Run' revolutionized organ pop!"

"Yeah--it put people off of it." Grim snickered.

Rimmer couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Constable," he said to Goody, "tell them what a genius Reggie Wilson is!"  
"Who's that, then?"

Rimmer swung over to Gladstone. "You agree with me that Reggie Wilson is the greatest male singer of all time, don't you? I know whom you consider the greatest female singer of all time . . ."

"Reggie Wilson's trash." Gladstone told him.

Rimmer spluttered with rage. "Doesn't anyone know good music when they hear it?"

"Yeah, we do." Habib said. "That's why we avoid Reggie Wilson like mad cow disease."  
  


At the holding cell, Professor Crichton and Agent Lister were trying to figure out what to do with the alien now.

"Don't suppose we could bung him in a taxi, eh?" Agent Lister said to Crichton.

"Not unless it's a really big one."

"Van?"

"Possibly."

"What's all this talk about vans, then?" the Vogon asked Lister.

"We're takin' you back to headquarters," Lister explained.  
The Vogon became indignant. "I can't go anywhere!"

"Why not?"

"What if the force beam that brought me here returns for me, and I'm not here? I'll miss my chance to go home!"

Professor Crichton blinked. "Force beam?"

"I presume that's what it was."

_Interesting, Professor Crichton mused to himself. He'd heard of such things existing in theory, but no one to date had ever actually witnessed such a phenomenon first-hand. The new arrival was turning to be more and more interesting by the minute . . ._

*in the episode "Meltdown

**Lorries=UK slang for trucks


	4. Things Start Going Seriously Smegging Wr...

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE RED DWARF CHAPTER 4 

**Here we are in Chapter 4 already! Isn't this exciting? I can see some of you are still lost, so let me fill you in.**

**What do you mean, who am I? Detective Constable Allen Benedict Rimmer, at your service! And quite frankly, I can see why you're confused. This plot has more twists and turns than the Autobahn, and you'd have to be either a genius or a complete loony to be able to follow all of them . . .**

**Get on with it? I AM getting on with it! All right, so Inspector Fowler's gone missing. There's some type of alien being here who insists we take him home at once. And Goody's running around like a chicken minus its cranium because some book or other is all wrong. He says there's people in it that don't belong in there, and the ones that do aren't. Personally, I think he's due for a long holiday, but that's not up to me.**

**Oh, the author asked me to pass this on. There's a little blue box down the corner of the page that says "review", and she'd be obliged if you'd press it and tell her what you think.**

Back on _Red Dwarf_, Fowler was posing the question to Holly . . .

"So how do I get out of here, then?"

"Well, uh . . ." Holly began.

"And when do we get our captain back?" the visiting Vogon demanded.

"Er . . ." Holly stammered.

Kryten took over. "We are even now attempting to locate the dimensional portal through which your captain disappeared . . ."

"Well, what's stopping you?"

_Could it be that we don't even know what we're supposed to be looking for?_

"S'not an easy job, is it?" Holly said.

"Indeed not." Kryten said.

Things had gotten so smegged up, four-dimensionally speaking, that even Einstein would have had a hard time sorting it all out.

_I went to a party, Trillian thought__. That's all I did. I went to a party . . . and it was the best and the worst thing I ever did._

_I should have smashed that dimensional body-swapper to smithereens __when I had the chance, Marvin decided glumly. __But nobody asks my opinion. It's always Marvin, sweep the floor. Marvin, could you get that for us? Nobody asks, Marvin, are we making a colossal mistake that could destroy the universe?_

_I'm definitely going __to need a bath when I get home, Fowler mused back on __Red Dwarf._

In short, the universe made less sense than a DVD instruction manual.

The only person who could possibly fix it was stranded on a barren lump of rock that didn't even have a name.

And he was understandably very upset about it.  
He was the Reality Flipper's inventor.

"I never meant for this to happen," he said to himself. "I really didn't . . . ."

Nobody answered him, which was only to be expected. He was, after all, the only sentient being in that neck of the woods. The nearest intelligence was at least a good two days' drive away. Which was the way he had wanted it at the time, but now it seemed just a teeny tad inconvenient . . . given that the fabric of reality was now weaker than the defendants' case at Nuremberg.

But he couldn't do this alone.  
He pulled out his Trans-Dimensional Sub-Reality cell phone and called an old friend.  
"Slartibartfast? That you? Listen . . . I've got a wee bit of a problem here . . ."

"Does it involve fjords?"  
"No, not really."

"Oh . . . it's that Reality Flipper business, isn't it?"

"I wish I'd never invented the bloody thing. It's gone and messed up four timelines, and now the whole smegging universe is falling apart."

"There's nothing we can do to fix it?"  
"Well, now that you mention it . . . I just might know of someone..."

The phone began to ring at the secret laboratory of the space-time continuum's greatest scientific mind . . . but he was out to lunch.

But his assistant was there.

"Hello?"

"I've got a bit of a problem with the Reality Flipper..."

"The what? Who is this?"

"OK, here's the story . . ."

The assistant listened to his explanation and came to one conclusion . . . Reality Flippers were more trouble than they were worth.  
But of course, Dave Lister could have told him so.  
Gandalf could have told him so.  
Sgt. Dawkins could have told him so.  
For that matter, the average kindergarten student could have told him so.  
He then contacted his boss, who had just finished an experiment . . . which had blown up in his face.

Literally.

Fortunately, the blast wasn't strong enough to be fatal. It did, however, give him a wicked headache and a ringing in his ears, so that for the first few minutes, he shouted into the telephone.

"WHAT ABOUT THE REALITY FLIPPER?" he yelled.

"Don't shout!"  
"WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"

"I** said, don't shout!"**

This went on for some time, before the ringing in the great man's ears subsided and he was able to hear somewhat normally.

"All right," he said when the yelling had subsided, "let's take it from the top."

"We don't have time!"

_Tell me something I don't know, the inventor thought as the universe continued to go haywire . . ._

Back on _Red Dwarf . . . Lister and company were trying to get something together to help Fowler return to Gasforth._

"I'm not sure this will work," Kryten said.

"It's got to work, man." Lister insisted. "I looked up the blueprints right there in that _Hitchhiker's Guide, man."_

"How do you know that thing's not out of date?" Rimmer asked. "They don't even have a decent entry for Earth, for smeg's sake!"

"I checked the copyright date."

"And?"

"It's only five years old."

"Well, a lot can happen in five years!"

"Indeed." Kryten nodded.

"Are you sure this will work?" Fowler asked.

"We can only hope, matey." Holly said, which didn't fill the inspector with a great deal of confidence . . .

_I'm supposed to trust my life to this lot, am I? They make Kray look like Stephen __Hawking._

But he had no choice. They were his best hope of being reunited with Patricia.

"Fire away."  
Kryten looked puzzled.

"He's saying to go ahead." Lister translated.

"Yes, sir."

Fowler crossed his fingers . . .

There was a hum . . . then a crackle . . . and then . . . Fowler felt the entire ship start to tremble like an Enron executive standing before St. Peter at the Pearly Gates.

"Is this supposed to happen?"

"Smeg if I know, man." Lister admitted.

"Whatever you do," Holly said, "don't listen to the toaster."  
"Toaster?" Fowler was mystified. "How can you listen to a toaster? Electrical appliances don't talk!"

Rimmer leaned over and whispered, "Long story."

"Which, hopefully, I won't be around to hear?"

Back in Gasforth, things were going a bit strange.  
The lights kept flickering on and off.

"It's the force beam!" the Vogon cried ecstatically.

"What's a force beam?"

Agent Lister shouldn't have said that, because the Vogon then went into a numbingly detailed explanation of the physics of interdimensional travel . . . and lost everyone after the first few words.

Everyone except Professor Crichton, that is, who started writing everything down, in anticipation of a possible future Nobel Prize nomination.  
  
  


Elsewhere, in Middle Earth, the Elves were wondering what to do with their, ahem, guests.

Arwen in particular was eager to find a place to put the two-headed one.

Preferably one as far away from her as possible.

Mount Doom sounded good.

He was a bit too lecherous for her liking. Right now he was suggesting a rather unusual use for pointed ears . . . and then the ground started to tremble beneath them.

"What's happening?"

"Smeg if I know!" Ford shouted over the rumbling.

"Middle-Earth-quake?"

"You would have to think of a stale joke at a time like this, Earthman." Zaphod groaned.

"Well, what would you have me do?"

"I'd have you get us the smeg out of here, for starters!"  
  
  


On board the _Heart of Gold, things were similarly smegged up._

"Whoa, what's that all about?" Eddie wondered as the entire ship started rocking.

Gollum was not too happy about it . . . and neither was Sam.

"I'd rather be facing Ringwraiths!" he told Frodo as they bounced off a particularly hard bulkhead.

"How do we stop this?"

"I don't even know if we can!"

Far away in time and space, the inventor of the Reality Flipper was in a similar state of panic.  
"You're supposed to fix things, not make them worse!"

"Sorry." His friend said. "There's going to be a lot more of that before we're done, I'm afraid . . ."


	5. Finally, The Whole Mess Sorted Out

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE RED DWARF CHAPTER 5 

**I am Gollum, precious. We were looking for the ring and chasing Hobbitses when we found ourselves far from home. Now we wants to go back to Middle Earth . . .**

**. . . but first we wants more wicked strength lager! **

**Oh do smeg off! Anyway, it looks like we're finally about to get this whole reality mess untangled, and not a minute**

**too**** soon if you ask me.**

**Indeed, Mr. Rimmer. All this dimension-jumping and time-swapping was really beginning to put a strain on my logic circuits!**

"I really didn't need to hear that," Slartibartfast said to the inventor as he made some adjustments to the safety controls. "Now we'll have to put in an extra fuel rod for more power."

"And where are we supposed to get one?"

"There's a town twenty miles over the hill . . ." suggested the assistant.

"Hill?"

There hadn't been a hill there a moment ago.

Without hesitation or thought, Slartibartfast raced to get the fuel cells . . . and suddenly found himself standing at the door of the strangest boutique he'd ever seen.

The door opened. "Can I help you, sir?"

"Er . . ." After a short pause, Slartibartfast asked him, "Do you have any fuel rods?"

"Why? Your car broken down?"

"They're for a friend. His dimensional body swapper needs more power." Slartibartfast explained.  
"His what?"

"Dimensional body swapper."  
"'S what I thought you said." The shopkeeper motioned Slartibartfast inside . . .

The shop was packed floor to ceiling with just about everything one could possibly want to buy or sell, except land. There were car parts in one aisle, Pan-Galactic Gargle Glaster mixes in another, pencils in a third . . . and one seemed to contain nothing but pink stuffed animals. There was even an aisle for Elven hair-care products, which would have come in handy in Middle-Earth—always washing their hair, those Elves were . . .

"Ah! Here we go . . . fuel rods, aisle twelve, shelf C."

"How do you ever find anything in here?"

"The signs, mostly." Slartibartfast's companion explained. "What size did you say you needed?"

Slartibartfast held his hands about half a foot apart. "This size ought to just about do it."

"Ah, the XT34. We have several of those in stock."

It was a good thing he found them when he did, because at that moment, something seriously strange happened to . . .

Kryten on board _Red Dwarf._

He turned female.  
Or at least as female as a Mechanoid can get.

"Smeggin' 'ell!" Lister erupted when he noticed the transformation.

"Oh, dear me," Krytina said. "Where did my groinal attachment socket go?"  
Cat took the quickest of looks. "It's still there, bud, but it's more of a plug-in now."

Back at Gasforth police headquarters, Sgt.Dawkins found she'd grown an extra foot . . . literally.

_How am I going to buy socks now? They don't sell them in threes!_

Aboard the _Heart of Gold, several of the Fellowship appeared to have changed species. Not to mention genders._

Legolas did not look good as a female dwarf. Nor, for that matter, did Frodo seem particularly attractive as a human female.

"My precious is confused." Gollum groaned.

He was still male . . . more or less . . . as was Gandalf.

But . . . um . . . oh, I can't! It's too horrible!  
(You're the narrator! You can't wimp out!)  
But I can't tell them what they turned into!  
(You want your paycheck or not?)  
Oh, all right.  
They were Orcs. And rather ugly Orcs at that.

Yes, I can see you out there, shuddering at that mental image. But don't turn away! There's still a lot more story left!  
Well, okay, not a lot more . . .  
I am getting on with it!  
Anyway . . .

Slartibartfast and the inventor were in a race against time . . . and time was leading by two lengths going into the far turn.

If they didn't fix this soon . . . all reality, everywhere, would fall apart. Causing no end of problems for all parties concerned.

"Where does this thingie go?"  
"That's not a thingie!" The inventor rolled his eyes.

"Oh, right."

The assistant had no grasp of technical language. Everything was a "thingie" or a "doohickey" or a "whachacallit".

Finally, however, by a cosmic miracle they managed to get the fuel rods in place . . .

And the stupid thing still wouldn't work.

"This is not good." Slartibartfast said.

"Oh, wait. I put the battery in backwards!"  
The necessary adjustment was made . . . and the machine was finally working.

"How long will it take," Slartibartfast asked, "before the timelines sort themselves out?"

The inventor looked at his watch. "Not long at--"

"--all."  
"Thank God." Lister said as Krytina prepared to activate the _Red Dwarf crew's improvised dimensional body swapper._

"I'm not spendin' another minute like this!" Cat declared emphatically, staring at his newly acquired tentacles.

"Not to worry, sirs . . . er, as the case may be," said Krytina. "Everything will be sorted out in due time."

In Gasforth, Goody found his hair had turned a strange shade of pink.  
He tried to cover it with his hat . . . but that only made it more conspicuous.

Then in a flash, it was back to its normal color.

However, in the meantime, Gladstone had shrunk eight inches in height. And Habib had turned purple, which did not make her happy.

Aboard the _Heart of Gold, Gollum had started to grow hair._

"My precious iss not liking this!"

"Neither are the rest of us." Sam chimed in . . . and then the ship turned upside-down.

"Gods preserve us." Gandalf groaned.

But things weren't much better in Middle-Earth . . . even the Orcs knew something was out of whack.

"What do we do?" asked Arwen of her father.

"I'm not sure what--"

"Awfully sorry to interrupt," Arthur said at that moment, "but where did I acquire an extra eye from?"

"Probably the same place I got the extra arms," Ford said.

"Interesting." said Arthur. "Reminds me of the Improbability Field on the _Heart of Gold . . ."_

Interestingly enough, aboard the _Heart of Gold itself at the moment, the Improbability Field was fluctuating like a pop star's waistline._

All kinds of improbable things, like sudden rains of frogs and the appearance of a line of chorus dancers, started happening . . . in some cases, simultaneously.

The terrified Hobbits were hiding under what dimly resembled a pool table.

Had there been one there before? They couldn't remember now.

And it didn't matter anyway, because it suddenly vanished again . . .  
only to be replaced by the scanner table which was supposed to be there.  
At last the timelines were shifting back to something somewhat resembling normal.  
  
Inspector Raymond Fowler blinked . . .  
. . . and found himself standing back in Gasforth, next to a big green thing . . . which then disappeared.

The big green thing, of course, was the Vogon captain, who turned up back on his own ship . . .

. . . while Trillian was the first to return to the Heart of Gold.

"Helloooo?"  
"Who's that?" said Eddie.

"It's me,Trillian."  
"Thank God." sighed Arthur, who was picking himself up off the floor with help from Ford and Marvin.

"And where have you been?"  
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

So he did.  
The only part he left out was Zaphod hitting on Arwen. For obvious reasons.

Gandalf and the Fellowship reappeared where they had been before all this madness began . . . back in Middle Earth.

In the snow.

Not that they were going to complain about a little, given all that had happened to them recently . . .

"And how long," Slartibartfast asked, "till their memories adjust?"  
"Oh, shouldn't be long now . . ."

Not that Vogons remember much anyway. The others took a bit longer.

When it was all over, there was nothing left to clean up but a wrecked Parrot's Cafe.

A few weeks after this particular temporal and dimensional knot had been untangled, however, another one cropped up in the vicinity of a certain couple's lovely home near London.One of the residents of this home, one Hyacinth Bucket, had been going out to her garden when she noticed a rather inconvenient empty space where her husband had been standing just a minute before. Right after this, she noticed a Series 4000 mechanoid parked higgledy-piggledy on her front lawn.  
She immediately said the first thing that sprang to mind:  
  


"Oh, smeg . . ."

**THE END**

  
  


To be continued in **_KEEPING UP DISAPPEARANCES_**

(Hyacinth is the property of Roy Clarke and the BBC.)


End file.
